


The Colour of Magic

by spitecentral



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Character Study, Gen, I honestly have no clue how to tag this, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Platonic VLD Month 2017, magic-ish? it's complicated, well I mean in an alternate universe but it still counts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 19:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12564208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitecentral/pseuds/spitecentral
Summary: Keith has always been able to see magic, but it took him a while to meet others that could too.Or: AU where quintessence behaves more like magic, and only the paladins of Voltron can see it.





	The Colour of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> For Platonic VLD Month, day 30: Witch AU, only I... didn't follow the prompt at all. Whoops.
> 
> I never in a million years thought that I'd ever write something Keith-centric but guess what it's almost 5000 words. The ending is kinda rushed, but I think it's still pretty decent. The last half was a chore to write, but I also had fun with the concept, so! I hope you guys like it!
> 
> WARNING: this fic contains some very brief mentions of child abuse/neglect and bullying. I didn't tag it because it's literally four sentences or something, but still, be warned.

Keith was five years old when he first talked with the magic.

It was late on a summer’s day, meaning that the sand was still warm as he stood on it, the telltale smell of dust and a lack of rain hung in the air, his pants were a little too small and pricked him in his side, and the sun stood low on the horizon, providing too little light to see anything but vague shapes.

The magic didn’t need any light to be seen. It swirled around the lonely dandelion that had managed to survive the desert heat, clinging to its leaves, crawling up and down its stalk, giving the yellow flower a soft cyan glow. Keith reached out a finger, and it crawled up him, too, drawing out little specks of light from his skin and growing brighter and larger.

It told him it was curious. He told it he was curious, too. He’d seen the blue glow before, but never this bright. It told him that’s why it was curious itself. It hadn’t been so bright before, unless it was around the Lion.

He was about to ask what lion it was talking about, when his dad picked him up.

“It’s getting dark, son,” he said, Texan drawl evident in his voice. “Let’s go inside.”

He put Keith against his shoulder, and Keith tried to turn his head so he could look at his father. “I saw magic today!” he declared. “It’s around the dandelion right now!”

His dad didn’t turn to look at the dandelion, but he smiled at Keith. “Really?” he asked. “What’d it look like?”

“Glowy blue!”

“Glowy blue magic? Sounds pretty.”

“It was! Nice too. I talked to it.”

“Did you, now?”

His dad carried him inside and closed the door behind them. Keith could barely catch the light around the dandelion flickering out.

Keith kept seeing the magic, but soon stopped talking about it. He learnt that others couldn’t see it, and that you don’t talk to things that aren’t there.

///

His dad left, or was taken, or died, or something, but he wasn’t there anymore, and social services found out. Nice ladies and a few nice men managed to take him to some community center, where they were talking about him very unsubtlety.

Keith was ten years old and not adoptable, but he went into the system anyway. The years after were a blur of families that didn’t care for him, didn’t understand him, and didn’t want to do either of these things.

He tried not to talk to the magic. Even before the houses, he knew people would think he was crazy. But in the houses, he learnt that it was scary to slip up. People yelled, grew pale, gave him back to social services, and sometimes even hit him, though that was mostly the other kids. He learnt that staying quiet wasn’t just preferred, but necessary.

But the magic helped him, in its own way. If a house he was in had forgotten to feed him, it would lay a trail to the nearest and cheapest grocery store. If it was dangerous to enter his house at the moment, either because the kids or the adults were angry, it blocked the way to the door. If he didn’t know the answer to a question on a test, it sometimes whispered it in his ear.

When Keith was twelve, it pointed him to a sign-up sheet for summer camp. Junior Astronauts, organized by the Galaxy Garrison. It was a camp to learn about space, and what it meant to be an astronaut, and it was taught by Galaxy Garrison cadets who were about to graduate. Keith had never been particularly interested in space, but he knew better than to doubt the magic at this point.

He argued with it when he saw the price listed in the pamphlet - those were all of his savings, and his current house wasn’t going to pay for the camp. But it insisted, and he relented. He convinced his house to let him go (not that that was very hard, as long as he was paying), and he left the next summer.

The magic followed him, of course.

///

He’d expected to be the odd one out at camp, and he was, but mostly because he was the only one who didn’t come in with a base knowledge about space. Apparently, the majority of the kids here really really loved space.

Which, okay, made sense. But it was still weird to Keith how he was the one being ostracized for _not_ being a nerd.

Despite his general lack of interest in space and stars and everything related to it, the camp was fun, a basic sort of way. The kids weren’t necessarily mean, the facts were interesting enough, and the instructors/camp counselors were nice. Nothing outstanding, though. Until they got to a flying simulator.

The simulator was something else. The other instructors had grinned at them and told them they were in for a treat, flying together with Shirogane, who had apparently broken all flight records in the Garrison. Keith was skeptical, but even he had to admit that flying a spaceship (if only a simulation of one) sounded exciting.

Keith was almost last in line to go into the cockpit with Takashi “Call me Shiro” Shirogane. Shiro was waiting, and after a few seconds where he seemed to startle looking at Keith, cheerfully waved him over to the co-pilot seat.

His hand left little rays of blue light in its wake.

Keith stared at that for a while. Magic rarely attached itself to human beings, usually preferring plants and the occasional animal. In fact, Keith had never seen it linger for more than a second on anyone but himself.

But the veins in Shiro’s hands glowed with that familiar light, and his eyes carried blue specs in them. And the sparks he left behind as he tapped on the control panel were brighter than a bonfire.

“Are you coming?” Shirogane asked him, smiling with a friendly blue glow. “Nothing to be scared of, I promise.”

Keith almost wanted to ask him if he could see the blue light surrounding him, but instead, he sat down. No need to risk anything just yet.

“What’s your name?” Shirogane asked him, the words almost spelled out by blue.

“Keith,” he said, stubbornly refusing to look anywhere but the control panel.

“Well, welcome to the cockpit, Keith. We’re going on a mission to Jupiter today. I’m piloting, but we can switch sometimes, if you want to. That sound good?”

Shiro’s hands on the control panel were following a pattern spelled out by the blue. Keith watched it curiously, before remembering he had to answer.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, “sounds great.”

“Alright. Buckle up, here we go!”

And they were off, and Keith forgot everything about magic for a few seconds, as it almost felt like they were plunging off a cliff.

“Sorry!” Shiro said cheerily, as he steered them towards the ground. “Must’ve clicked on the wrong program!”

He pulled up at the last second, and swirled across the foreign planet’s ground, narrowly missing various red pillars. Keith was clamping his seat, almost forgetting that they were in a simulator, and hadn’t felt that alive in years. It almost felt like he was really, truly flying.

They swirled across the red planet some more, before taking off into the air, flying through asteroid fields and doing loops for no reason. He watched the stars - fake, of course, but it felt so _real_ \- float by, and he had never, ever felt more at home, right there in the seat next to a maniac who seemed like he was trying to crash them every few seconds.

“Fun, huh!” Shiro grinned at him, as he narrowly dodged a piece of space junk. “You wanna try?”

“Yes!” Keith shouted, flying out of his seat and into the pilot’s. Shiro easily switched with him. Keith noted that his whole body seemed to radiate light now, and as Keith moved to grab the controls, he noticed that he, too, seemed to be leaving a stronger trail of magic than usual.

The magic whispered that this was what he was good at, what both he and Shiro were good at, and what they both loved the most. After almost flying into an asteroid while Shiro just laughed, Keith was grinning too hard to disagree.

The simulation ended, and it took a few seconds for Keith to process as the lights turned on bright again.

Shiro grinned at him, leaning back in the co-pilot chair. “You’re really, really good at this, Keith,” he said, looking like he meant it too. “You should think about applying for the Garrison in a couple of years.”

Keith, still high on the adrenaline of not-crashing-but-only-barely, nodded vigorously.

“Oh, and also,” Shiro was getting up, and the magic around him was dimming a bit, “if they ask, you were on a cargo flight to Jupiter. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to pick that simulation.”

He shrugged his shoulders in a ‘what can you do’ motion, before winking at him. Keith grinned.

They got out of the simulator, Shiro called in another kid, and it was almost painful to look at non-glowing humans again.

///

After, Shiro seemed to take a liking to him. Or maybe he took a liking to Shiro. Or maybe it was just magic doing its work. Either way, they spent more time with each other, talking at lunch, playing games in free time, that kind of thing. Nothing screaming ‘blatant favoritism’, but still noticeable if you knew what you were looking for.

Most people didn’t. Keith did. He was hyper-aware of the glowing man, because he, well, glowed. The magic seemed permanently attachment to Shiro in much the same way as it was to him. Keith noticed that it seemed to become brighter when he was excited, dimmer when he seemed sad, and that it sometimes showed him the way the same way it did for him. It was really weird to see it from an outside perspective for once.

Shiro didn’t talk to it, and he didn’t even seem aware of it. But Keith wondered if that was because he truly couldn’t see it, or because he had simply trained himself to pretend the way Keith had.

He didn’t know how to find out, though. It wasn’t like he could walk up to him and say “Excuse me instructor Shirogane - Shiro - but can you see the magic around you?”

So he just waited. Observed. Tried to figure out if Shiro could see it. He got nowhere.

It all came to a head when Keith snuck away from the group he was stargazing with. One of the kids in there couldn’t stand him, and the feeling was mutual. Keith slipped away from the instructor first chance he got, and settled down some way from the group, looking up at the stars.

It was night, and the desert sky stretched out above him, filled with bright white dots. He was curled up in a ball, shivering against the cold. Staring at the sky was something he did a lot as a kid, and he’d lived in the desert, too. This wasn’t a new sight for him, and he didn’t care much for it.

“Want a blanket?”

Shiro was standing over him, waving a flower-patterned blanket at him. Light radiated from him, illuminating the area around him like he was shining a flashlight.

The magic walked ahead of Shiro as he came closer, until it was enveloping Keith too. He felt a sudden wave of warmth wash over him, and he tried not to gasp. He’d had no idea the magic was capable of that.

Keith didn’t protest as Shiro dropped the blanket on him, even though he was sure the light was enough to keep him warm.

They sat next to each other, Shiro quietly sipping from a cup of coffee, staring up at the stars.

“Not going to teach me about the constellations?” Keith finally asked, just to break the silence.

Shiro shrugged. “I could. I love nerding out about these things. But I don’t think you’d really care much.”

Keith nodded, than grimaced. It was probably not the best idea to admit that to a teacher at a camp for ‘young astronauts’.

Shiro saw his sour expression, and laughed. “It’s okay, kid. I know you don’t care much for space. Figured it out in a week or so.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Keith, because it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Eh, it’s fine,” Shiro said, waving his apology away, leaving small blue falling stars behind. “We can’t all be interested in everything. But I do have to ask…”

Shiro lowered his voice. The magic dimmed to an almost dangerous level. Keith watched curiously as it wrapped itself around Shiro’s neck, moving in a way that could almost be described as nervous.

And now that he was looking for it, Keith could see it in Shiro too. He gripped his mug just a bit too tightly, stared at the stars a bit too intently. Shiro was nervous.

Keith sat up.

“If you don’t care for space, why are you in a space camp?”

Why was Shiro about asking that?

Keith stared as the magic shrunk around Shiro’s neck with every second that he didn’t answer, the light growing dimmer and dimmer. It wasn’t just nervous now. It was scared.

The bright smile Shiro gave him was so incredibly different from his light that it was almost creepy. No-one should be able to act like that.

“Was there anything special that brought you here?”

The magic had almost disappeared. Shiro set his mug down. Keith guessed that his hands had started shaking.

“…something blue?”

Keith’s mouth fell open. He couldn’t react. He couldn’t even think.

Something blue.

The magic grew brighter.

“You can see it.”

And the magic grew brighter and brighter, until the blue light was almost obscuring the stars. It covered Shiro’s every vein, his eyes began sparking, and it was almost audibly buzzing.

And even so, Shiro’s smile was brighter.

“You can _see_ it.”

///

Shiro’s story was similar to his own. He’d realized that he could talk to the magic when he was young, but suppressed the ability because people thought he was crazy. Shiro admitted that he’d started to become convinced that he actually was.

Until Keith showed up.

After that night under the stars, they talked about the magic, and sometimes through the magic. Shiro could do more than he - he could make the magic spell out words for him, give it almost physical form so that it could fetch things from far away. He’d learned how to adapt the magic to his normal life, and how to make his connection to it as useful as possible.

Keith was better at reading the magic, though. Keith could tell Shiro what the magic was feeling at any given moment, could unravel its mystery messages without breaking a sweat. The first time Keith had admitted that, Shiro’s magic had glowed so bright he’d almost bought a pair of sunglasses on the spot.

Shiro began teaching Keith how to use his magic, and Keith began teaching Shiro how to listen. They were both excellent students, and before the end of the summer, they had picked up at least half of the other’s tricks.

Their stories were alike in more than the magic. Shiro’s parents had died when he was twelve, and he’d bounced around in foster care before finally managing to win a Garrison scholarship.

“You can win one too,” he told Keith one night, “I saw you fly that simulator. I wasn’t kidding when I said you were talented. Apply for Garrison when you’re sixteen - I’ll put in a good word for you, if they’re still keeping me around then.”

That last part was said like a joke. The first part wasn’t.

Keith left the camp with more control over his magic, a goal in life, and the first real friend he’d made since.

Well.

Ever.

///

Keith and Shiro kept in touch, calling and writing each other. Usually they wrote emails. On special occasions, like Christmas, Shiro insisted on using the old fashioned postal mail, though.

Keith found out why the first time he’d opened a Christmas letter and found a glowing blue reindeer jump out.

Keeping in touch with Shiro was magical for the obvious reasons, and for the personal ones. Never had anyone put in this much effort to speak with him, to keep him around. It was overwhelming, almost, but good. Very good.

He applied for the Garrison at sixteen, as promised. He was accepted.

And, to absolutely nobody’s surprise, the Garrison still wanted Takashi Shirogane, now a decorated fighter pilot, around.

They saw each other for the first time in three years, and they hugged so long that Keith swore their magic would be permanently bound.

First day of school, he looked around at his classmates, and saw, to his surprise, that there was another blue boy sitting right behind him, chatting at everyone who would listen.

He followed the blue boy, and almost chocked when he met up with another guy, who was glowing only slightly dimmer than his classmate.

He swore that he would talk to them.

He didn’t. He was too awkward, and the longer boy, his classmate (Lance?) seemed to take all of his approaches as an attack. The broader boy, an engineer, he thought, seemed loyal enough to his friend to follow his lead and ignore Keith.

It hurt a bit, being hated for no reason, by two people who were exactly like him, but Keith wasn’t quite desperate enough to push through it.

After all, he had Shiro.

///

Two years later, the Kerberos mission went MIA. Crew lost. Pilot error.

The magic was pointing a neon sign towards Iverson’s office, and so he broke in. The Garrison was hiding something. He knew it. He just knew it.

Shiro wouldn’t have crashed his crew. He wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have.

He couldn’t be dead.

Keith didn’t manage to find anything in Iverson’s office, mostly because he didn’t have the skills necessary to hack his computer.

That did not stop him from punching Iverson in the face.

Two days later, he turned eighteen, and a day after that he was expelled.

Keith knew he should feel disappointed, but he couldn’t.

The magic was pointing a sign away from the Garrison, and with Shiro gone, there was nothing left for him, anyway.

It wasn’t like he’d ever cared that much for space.

///

The magic led him back to the old shack where he and his dad had lived, and Keith used Shiro’s solid-magic trick to help clean up. He and the magic were done before sundown, and still had time to fix his dad’s broken hover bike.

The first night, he slept.

The second night, the magic glowed, and it led him to the caves. Weird rock drawings marred the walls, and he knew this couldn’t be a coincidence.

Shiro had left a hole, and losing the Garrison had widened it. These paintings couldn’t fill it, not by a long shot.

But something bright and blue told him that it might be worth his time, anyway.

///

Months passed, and Keith found himself falling back into the habit of talking out loud to his magic. It was hard not to, when there was no one else around. And sometimes, sometimes he almost felt like he could feel people around him.

Sometimes, he could swear that he heard Shiro’s voice, loud and afraid. Sometimes, he felt flour on his hands, or nausea in his stomach. Sometimes, he felt like laughing, jumping into a crowd of people, feeling too lonely to stay still. Sometimes, he felt angrier than usual, swearing to himself that he will find them. He didn’t know who ‘they’ were.

Sometimes, he woke up during the middle of the day, when the sun was at its highest, with his teeth clattering, feeling cold.

But he was sure that was just him going insane. He lived in the burning hot desert, all alone, without human contact. Something was bound to snap sometime.

So he ignored it the best he could, and slowly built up his conspiracy board.

///

It all came to a head one night, when the magic shook him awake, frantically leading him outside, to his hover bike, pointing signs back to the Garrison.

Keith followed its lead, grabbing explosives as ordered, and set them off as a distraction so that he could sneak inside, to see what the magic was getting worked up about.

He saw Shiro’s signature even before he’d opened the door.

He wanted to cry, wanted to scream, but there was no time. He needed to get them both out of here.

“Oh no you don’t, _I’m_ saving Shiro.”

A glowing blue boy walked in like this was some sort of shared lecture, shoved a table aside, and helped him carry Shiro. It took Keith a while to recognize him. Lance. The kid from his class.

Lance’s engineer friend was there too, magic dancing around his head as he nervously rambled on. Keith could see another boy behind him, a lot smaller than the rest, and to his surprise, he was burning just as bright as the rest of them.

Five people, all surrounded by glowing blue light.

No wonder the magic had been insistent on him coming here.

///

After that, things had happened at the speed of light, and before he knew it, he was facing an alien princess.

She was blinding. The blue didn’t just cling to her, it drowned her in it - no, that was wrong. It was like it surrounded her the way planets surrounded their sun. Her eyes burned bright as suns and turned to hellfires during battle, and her happiness turned her sparks of magic into fireworks.

She was magical, through and through, and Keith was so overwhelmed that he barely took note of anything else.

Even the giant space cat paled in comparison to this galaxy of light.

///

But even she felt like a candle next to Voltron.

He felt their magic connect, felt their gravities collide, and they formed one being. He saw his veins light up, saw them ooze the energy, capture it, use it to form weapons, to communicate with each other. Their magic was synced, no, more than that - their beings were synced, and they were really, truly one.

He was breathless when they lost the formation, and felt like crying.

///

He soon learnt that their magic worked in different ways.

Lance’s magic was like water. It flowed through his veins, and it rarely left his body. Keith saw it adapt to the people around him - when next to Hunk, the magic was slower, steadier, when next to Pidge, it was restless, taking different routes every second, when next to Allura, it burned bright, gravitating to her like all other sources of magic did.

Pidge’s magic was sly. It glowed inconsistently, dancing through her body like a circuit board, always changing its code. Only when Pidge was at rest did he see it act natural. Then, it was almost like a tree, moving in predictable paths, from her toes to her head, before fanning out like leaves.

Hunk’s magic was centered around certain places in his body; his feet, his knees, his hands, his shoulders, his forehead. It stayed there, glowing steady, only broken when Hunk was anxious or scared. Or when he was mad or happy - then, it jumped off his body, circling its pressure points, like it was too much energy to be contained in one spot, on one person.

Shiro’s magic was familiar, but it had changed so much. It was the only magic he’d ever seen that could jump around like that, rain from his body and flicker out, leave his atmosphere permanently. But it didn’t, anymore. The loose sparks that would’ve been lost forever, before, now clung to his body, circling him like satellites. He never saw any fallen stars anymore. It worried him.

Allura was… amazing. She was a galaxy, a sun, a star, a royal among magic. It adored her, clung to her, shone from her like she was its birthplace, like she was a beacon to it all. Everyone’s magic gravitated towards her, and Keith could feel his own magic follow - it had no choice. She was their sun, and they could not escape her gravity.

But, strangely enough, Allura was the only one who didn’t seem to notice that she had it. Lance knew, often pulling silly tricks on people, creating illusions out of nowhere, or using the magic to mask his footsteps to become completely quiet. Hunk knew, often using the magic’s strength to reinforce him in battle, or simply using it as a warm blanket. Pidge knew, using her magic as a glorified listening device, listening carefully to what it said. And of course, Shiro and Keith knew too.

Allura, however, steadily denied having magic. Each time she did so, the paladins shot each other a glance, but there was nothing they could say to convince her that she was the most powerful of them all, so they left it.

///

Coran didn’t have magic, nor could he see it. But when Keith tried to explain it for the first time, his eyes lit up.

“Oh!” he said, grinning the way he always did before he went off on one of his stories. “Yes, I know about that. On Altea, we called it quintessence. It’s the life force of every living being, and can only be seen and used by a select few. You are very lucky that the life force of your planet has chosen you!”

Quintessence?

The magic waved.

Keith smiled.

Quintessence.

///

Slowly, Keith realized something.

Their quintessence was not the life force of their planet.

He realized it first when Hunk’s quintessence seemed brighter, stronger, after returning from the Balmera.

It wasn’t their own either.

He saw many different planets, and with every planet they left, their quintessence changed.

After the water planet, Lance’s quintessence was calmer, more at rest.

After Olkarion, Pidge’s quintessence was less divided; it now flowed easily between a circuit board and a tree, often combining the two.

And Keith had seen the way Shiro’s quintessence had changed after escaping the Galra.

He realized something.

Their quintessence wasn’t theirs - it was the universe’s.

He couldn’t say that he was surprised.

They were the paladins of Voltron, defenders of the universe. 

Was it really that weird that they’d carry its life force too?

///

Years later, they returned to Earth, glowing brighter than ever, with a piece of countless planets inside of them.

They were a patchwork of magic, a vessel for quintessence, and as Keith watched it light up the sky to signal their arrival, he realized that he would never have it any other way.


End file.
